GOP: Sen. Hagan AWOL on ISIS

by Cameron Joseph - 09/29/14 8:54 AM ET

North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) is out with a hard-hitting new ad blaming Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) for keeping quiet as President Obama took his time to respond to ISIS.

{mosads}The ad argues President Obama was slow to recognize the threat from ISIS, and it argues that Hagan has missed half the Senate Armed Services Committee’s hearings this year.

“While ISIS grew, Obama kept waiting, and Kay Hagan kept quiet. The price for their failure is danger,” the ad’s narrator says.

Hagan’s camp fired back that Tillis has offered no plan on how to destroy ISIS.

“Speaker Tillis is desperate to distract from the fact that while he has no position on how to eliminate ISIS, and his comments have been called ‘waffling’ and ‘vague.’ Kay has been decisive and clear about what action must be taken to destroy these terrorists,” said Hagan spokesman Chris Hayden. “Just last week, Speaker Tillis admitted that he doesn’t know what we should or shouldn’t do to eradicate ISIS, and North Carolinians — especially our service members and their families — deserve better than Speaker Tillis’s spineless fence-sitting on this pressing national security threat.”

The Hagan campaign points to comments Tillis made about the congressional vote to arm and train ISIS leaders. He said he didn’t know if it was good to arm the Syria groups since little was known about them.

“I actually don’t know if we should or shouldn’t,” Tillis said. “I would have to know that these arms would not get in the hands of people who would want to take over the Middle East.”

The ad is one of the most direct to hit the airwaves since ISIS became a major campaign issue this month. Republicans have sought to tie Senate Democrats to President Obama, whose approval ratings on foreign policy are low.

Tillis was one of the first Republicans to jump on the issue, criticizing Hagan in their first debate over President Obama’s dismissal of ISIS as the “J.V. team.”

North Carolina has a large number of military bases and huge population of veterans, making foreign policy issues more powerful there than elsewhere.

The most recent polling in North Carolina shows Hagan with a narrow lead in the race.

The state is one of several Republicans hope to win to take over the majority in the Senate.

Tags Kay Hagan